Tablets in the classroom are no longer novel or a luxury item. In fact, tablets and other pieces of similar technology have become an invaluable item in a teacher’s tool chest, offering dedicated and inventive educators a whole new avenue to reach students and improve learning. As a school administrator or a decision-making teacher, you can appreciate the spiked levels of engagement these devices and assorted apps provide for students.
3 Essential Apps to Fire up Your Classroom Tablets
As various devices — particularly tablets — are now firmly entrenched in the classroom, it is important to find apps that enhance the classroom experience for students, engaging them and propelling them toward greater absorption and processing of new materials and academic excellence. As you work with your teachers to find effective and inspiring apps, it might help to take a look at a few that fellow teachers appreciate and stick with.
Photo Editor by Aviary
For your arts and science classes, photography often proves invaluable to the learning process. Whether your art teacher asks students to use the classroom camera to take a portrait photo and edit it to share with the class or your biology class takes a field trip and collects data via photographs, Photo Editor by Aviary can enhance any project and is free on Android and iOS operating systems.
TED
TEDTalks have become an educational and cultural phenomenon via several venues, such as YouTube and the TEDTalks website itself. You can corral all that collected wisdom and make it readily available to your information-hungry students with the TED app. Featuring more than 1,700 videos that discuss history, technology and innovation, astronomy and the space program, marine sciences, bioengineering, art and music, and anything else you can imagine. Your educators’ students can assign a subject and let students choose a talk that interests them based on the specific topic and speaker. They can listen via their respective classroom’s tablet and headphones before preparing a mini-report to ignite classroom engagement among peers and teachers.
TechSmith Fuse for Camtasia Relay
Film and video work are useful tools in any discipline when students need to record their findings and present them to peers and teachers. Your teachers can help students learn the finer points of using the classroom’s high-quality video camera to record important images, art projects, scientific processes and to actually create films and more before sending them off to the editing lab. Once it is time to prepare the piece to share with others, the TechSmith Fuse for Camtasia Relay can help make it simple for students to upload video and audio then edit it to their satisfaction.
The Most Engaging Apps Will Enhance the Tools You Have On Hand and Spark Excitement in Learning
At School Specialty, we understand the value of reaching your students where their interests tend to veer and that your educators need some reinforcements from time to time. With solid hardware like tablets and assistive peripheral devices, you can improve the process for everyone by searching for apps that complement those tools and elevate their power in reaching your students and making an impact. If you need help in finding core equipment, contact us.
